The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing and, more particularly, to dynamically enabling an interactive element within a non-interactive view of a screen sharing session.
Applications such as instant messaging applications and productivity applications can allow users to easily collaborate to perform important tasks. Many times, these applications include collaborative features such as screen sharing and Web conferencing. These features can offer a high degree of collaboration when users interact with other users via a shared screen. Common features of these applications often include a non-interactive mode which permits participants to observe a shared screen without granting access to the shared screen. For example, slideshows are frequently used within Web conferences to quickly communicate complex ideas with a large group of participants. The functionality allows a user to safely and easily share visual content of a computer screen at a particular time. As such, these applications provide an easy way to share complex information between users.
Frequently, however, participants desire to interact with portions of the slideshow which include interactive content (e.g., Uniform Resource Locator). For example, when a URL is presented within a slideshow, participants must manually copy the URL into a Web browser to view the content associated with the URL. That is, participants view a non-interactive image of the interactive content. These current manual approaches are time consuming and error prone. As such, collaborative applications limit the participant capability to interact with valuable information which can lead to significant frustration and a decreased participant experience.